Freedom House has released its Internet Freedom report for 2012. Thailand ranks as unfree, along with China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Burma, and a few others. The report is long and detailed.
The report notes that although “the Thai government has been blocking some internet content since 2003, restrictions have expanded in recent years in both scale and scope.” Most of this is related to the monarchy. Before 2007 it says that most censorship was “pornography, online gambling, or circumvention tools, although some politically oriented websites were also found to be inaccessible.”
Since 2007, censorship “has grown exponentially, particularly those with content perceived as critical of the monarchy.” Figures are provided.
After 7 April 2010, the Abhisit Vejjajiva government, backed by the military blocked a “large number of websites focused on the opposition red-shirt movement…. These included individual YouTube videos, Facebook groups, and Google groups.”
The report notes that “less clearly partisan online news outlets or human rights groups, such as Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT), the online newspaper Prachatai, the Political Prisoners in Thailand blog, and Asia Sentinel” were blocked.
The advent of the “democratically elected government” of Yingluck Shinawatra dashed “hopes that the new government would loosen internet censorship…”. Again, sites about the monarchy have been the target.
It states that some sites “blocked in 2010 were accessible, including FACT and the Political Prisoners in Thailand” have become available. For PPT this is only partly true as blocking is off and on. Media “reports citing government officials, thousands of webpages have been added to the blacklist under the new administration.” However, it is unclear if censorship has actually increased.
The centrality of the monarchy to censorship regime is explained:
Despite [a]… constraining environment, outside of comments perceived as critical of the monarchy, most other areas of discussion on political, social, and human rights issues are freely and passionately debated in Thailand.
The report notes that:
While many blogs and discussion sites are blocked, users can access them with readily available circumvention software, and content producers often republish information on alternate sites. These techniques have undermined the MICT’s censorship efforts.
That’s true, and this is why PPT has a “mirror” at PP of T. We are further mentioned in another section of the report:
As internet freedom has come under growing pressure, online activists have organized to push back. The Political Prisoners in Thailand blog provides information on lèse-majesté prosecutions. The Thai Netizen Network (TNN) was founded in early 2009 to uphold users’ right to access, free expression, and privacy via public statements and other advocacy initiatives.
This is a most useful report, and highly recommended to readers.
Political Prisoners in Thailand 